The Savage Marquess (17 page)

Kennedy looked at Lucinda. “I do know you, my lady, and yet I don’t, if you take my meaning.”

“Kennedy,” said Lucinda gently, “you evidently came to this inn to look for a friend of yours, a maid who had also disappeared. She was called Benson.”

But Kennedy was hardly listening. “If I am who you say I am, my lady, you must not order me back, for I am mortal fond of Silas here.”

“No, no, Kennedy. You may stay. I have no hold over you. But listen again. Benson. A maid called Benson. Maid to a Mrs. Maria Deauville. She came here with her mistress and was never seen again.”

Kennedy wearily shook her head.

“When would that be, my lady?” put in the landlord. “For a lady come here the night of the storm and gave a note to my stableboy to give to another lady what come in a post chaise. He’s shortsighted and didn’t get a good look at either of them.”

“No, it was before then,” said Lucinda. “I cannot give you a description of Benson—”

“Ah, but I can!” cried Mr. Dancer. “She is of middle-age, thin and wiry, with dark hair streaked with gray.”

The landlord looked puzzled.

“Her mistress, then,” said Mr. Dancer. “An exquisite creature dressed always in the first stare with golden hair and blue eyes, very beautiful and very dainty.”

“Ah, her,” said the landlord, his face clearing. “I mind her. And you’re right. She had a maid with her just like what you described. Let me see. She messed about a bit, getting me to move tables here and there in the garden. Why! She was setting right here. Right at the edge of the pond. Now, she ordered two glasses of ratafee. I could not see her from the windows, for you’ll see this table is out of sight of them. Her maid comes back through the inn and says to me not to bother them till I’m summoned. She was going out to the carriage to fetch something. Now, I swore I caught a glimpse of her coming back, but the carter arrived and I went out to see him.

“Then the lady comes into the inn and pays her shot and asks for her maid. I says I haven’t seen her and she says, oh, she must be in the carriage. That’s all I know.”

There was a long silence and then slowly everyone’s eyes turned in the direction of the pond.

“No, I cannot believe it, even of her,” said Lucinda.

“You are quite right. What you are thinking is ridiculous.” Mr. Dancer laughed. “How gothic.”

“If only Kennedy could remember something,” said Lucinda.

“I’ve got an old boat hook out back,” said Silas Snodgrass. “I’ll fetch it direct and fish around the pond a bit.”

“No!” cried Mr. Dancer, but the landlord was already making his way rapidly toward the inn. There came the sound of a carriage arriving. Kennedy bobbed a curtsy. “I’ll just attend to whoever has arrived, my lady,” she said, “and then I will come straight back.”

If Maria had been stupid enough to kill her maid and dump the body in the pond, thought Mr. Dancer desperately, then Kennedy, who might regain her memory, would be taken back to London to accuse Maria. Mr. Dancer was sure from the landlord’s tale that of the two women who had visited the inn during the storm, one of them had been Maria and the other Kennedy. Maria probably thought she had killed Kennedy. Perhaps she had struck her and left her for dead.

His frightened thoughts swung back to Lucinda. If he could get Lucinda to run away with him, then he could take her out of London.

“Lucinda,” he said. He stood up and walked around the table. Lucinda stood up as well. He pulled her into his arms and smiled into her eyes. “Forget this nonsense,” he whispered. “Come away with me. I will keep you safe from Rockingham until your marriage is annulled.”

“It is not so easy to get a marriage annulled,” Lucinda said, pushing him away.

“It is easy… if the marriage has not been consummated, as yours has not.”

Lucinda backed away, her eyes wide with shock. “You know,” she said. “it is all a plot. Benson sent to spy on Kennedy, Benson gossiping to Mrs. Deauville, Mrs. Deauville plotting with you to ruin me.”

She made to run toward the inn, but he caught her arm.

And then the Marquess of Rockingham charged into the garden. With a roar of fury, he rushed at Mr. Dancer, picked him up as if he weighed no more than a child, and threw him into the pond. Kennedy and Silas came running out.

“Come out so I can hit you again!” shouted the marquess, standing with his hands on his hips at the water’s edge.

Mr. Dancer crawled to the edge. “I was escorting your wife at her request,” he said miserably. “I…”

Then his face took on a greenish pallor and he stood up. “There is something rotten here,” he whispered.

He had trodden on Benson’s body, which lay at the bottom of the pond. His foot had struck the rotting canvas money belt and the threads had finally parted. What was left of Benson’s body slowly rose to the surface.

Half-drugged with opium, Maria Deauville stretched lazily in bed. She glanced at the clock and judged she had at least another hour before rising to begin making preparations for the evening ahead.

Opposite the bed hung a portrait of her late husband, Henri Deauville, a French émigré, who still had had most of the fortune he had taken out of France just before the Terror, when he had met Maria. He had been considerably older than she and had not lived long after the marriage. Maria never thought about him much and, even at the best of times, she had only a hazy memory of what he had been like. She had a capacity for living in the minute and never agonized very much about what she had done the year before or even the day before.

Vain and self-centered, nonetheless she had permitted the Marquess of Rockingham to become the only man ever to touch her heart. She reveled in his rakishness, feeling they were both of a kind. But most men, Maria knew, however rakish, could be depended on to settle down at last, and she had had every hope that when the marquess at last decided to marry, he would choose her.

Her eyes suddenly opened wide at the sound of the commotion in the street below. She rose groggily from her bed and pulled on a wrapper. She tugged aside the curtains and looked down into Montague Street. The first thing she saw was Mr. Carter standing on the other side. His face was so white, his gaze so agonized as he stared at her house, that she threw up the window, leaned out, and looked down.

One glance was enough.

She drew her head in quickly, her heart beating hard.

Down below was a line of carriages. On the pavement stood Rockingham, Lucinda, two Bow Street Runners, a man who looked like a magistrate… and Kennedy.

Her hand went to the bell to ring for Quinton and tell him to bar the door, and then fell to her side. Quinton would not refuse admittance to the Runners.

She slung a mantle around her shoulders and then rushed to her jewel box and began to stuff jewels into her pockets and fastened several necklaces about her neck. She clasped bracelets of precious stones about her wrists.

Putting on a pair of flat shoes, she paused only a moment to listen to the thunderous knocking on the door below.

She ran from her bedroom and began to climb up the stairs to the attics, where she knew there was a ladder leading to the roof.

Below her came the thud of footsteps running up the stairs. Once out on the roof, she slithered down the tiles to the parapet and then started inching her way along. Maria meant to try to make her escape along the roofs. But the effects of the opium she had taken made her dizzy. Below her the street reeled and danced. A crowd was collecting, pointing upward, all staring at the fantastic figure of Maria, bedecked with glittering jewels, her cloak open over her nightdress, swaying in the sunlight.

She had locked the skylight behind her, but with a crash, the lock was shattered and the Marquess of Rockingham climbed through. He, too, slid down to the parapet, then stood upright and advanced on her.

“You murderess,” he said.

“I did it for you, Rockingham,” pleaded Maria. “All for you. You should have married me. I love you.”

“No,” said the marquess, horrified. “I will take no blame for the brutal murder of your poor maid.”

“Let me escape,” pleaded Maria. “Please, Rockingham.”

“You did not let Benson escape,” he said. “And you thought you had killed Kennedy. You must stand trial.”

Maria closed her eyes for a moment. She had attended so many public hangings that she knew what it would be like to be the chief performer.

“Please…” she whispered again.

At that moment a Runner poked his head through the skylight and leveled a pistol at Maria. “Stay where you are,” he ordered. “In the king’s name, I—”

But that was as far as he got.

With a loud scream, Maria Deauville jumped.

The marquess crouched down and leaned over the edge. Maria lay in the middle of the road, her head at an awkward angle.

Jewels lay spilled about her.

There was a great roar from the people in the street.

The marquess closed his eyes as the greedy crowd closed in on the body, grabbing and tearing at the jewels.

Mr. Zeus Carter went straight to Mr. Dancer’s lodgings, to find that gentleman supervising the packing of his trunks.

“Maria has killed herself,” said Mr. Carter. “Oh, my heart! Jumped to her death. From the roof of her own house! Rockingham and the Runners were there.”

“Take those cases down to the carriage,” Mr. Dancer ordered his servants. Then he turned to Mr. Carter and said harshly, “Did she talk before she died?”

“I do not know,” said Mr. Carter, beginning to cry. “Rockingham was with her on the roof. Where are you going?”

“I am going to Paris in case Maria has told Rockingham of the plot to ruin his wife.”

“Take me with you,” begged Mr. Carter. “He will kill me.”

“I am not waiting in town for you to pack!”

Mr. Carter began to cry harder than ever.

“Oh, the deuce. Go and fetch your traps and meet me at the Wheatsheaf on the Dover Road. Do you know it?”

Mr. Carter nodded, and gulped.

“Then be off with you, or Rockingham will eat us both for his dinner!”

The two were eventually fortunate in their escape. For by the time the marquess had completed all the statements necessary about Maria Deauville’s guilt and manner of death, the couple were well on their way.

The marquess returned home after having failed to find either of them. He remembered the elation he had felt when he had bought that necklace for Lucinda. Now he felt miserable and guilty. To have had a mistress before marriage was just about as common in society as it was to have a mistress after marriage. But to have kept a mistress who was a murderess! How could he explain that? How could he explain that his relations with his mother had colored his view of women? That he had never in his life contemplated being married to anyone who would have any emotional hold on him whatsoever? His conscience told him he could at least start off by apologizing, but his conscience was at war with all his aristocratic upbringing. Gentlemen never apologized.

He pushed down the door of his home in Berkeley Square, to be met by those now-familiar smells of flowers and beeswax and applewood fires.

But there was an empty air about the place. The very spirit of home had fled.

So he was not surprised when Chumley with a face like a fiddle handed him a letter from his wife.

He went into the saloon and slumped down in a chair and looked at it a long time without opening it.

At last he broke the seal.

“Dear Rockingham,” he read, “I am gone to Lord Chamfreys’ to join my father. I think you must understand that after today’s events I am come to my senses and must demand an annulment of our marriage. Nonetheless, I remain deeply grateful to you for rescuing me from Lady Ismene. You must see, however, that we could never suit. I remain, Yr. obedient servant, L.”

He put down the letter on his lap and stared miserably at the dancing flames of the fire. Most of society stopped lighting fires at the end of March and did not think it necessary to warm their houses until the beginning of September. Only such a homemaker as Lucinda appreciated that the English climate was never really warm.

Chumley stood outside the door, waiting for the shout to get the carriage ready. Another night’s wild dissipation would be in the cards, of that he was sure.

When the expected shout came, he went sadly into the saloon.

But the marquess’s words surprised him. “Chumley, why the deuce has my lady gone to Chamfreys’? Does she not know her father is at Cramley, looking after the alterations to the gardens?”

“No, my lord,” said Chumley. “My lady simply said to me she was going to join her father. I naturally assumed you would have told her all about removing Mr. Westerville to Cramley.”

“Order the carriage, Chumley,” said the marquess, “and pack my things.”

“Yes, my lord,” said Chumley, his face breaking into a rare smile. “Right away, my lord.”

“Which carriage did my lady take?”

“She went post chaise, my lord.”

“Good, then perhaps we can catch up with her. She will need to put up somewhere on the road for the night.”

At the Pelican posting house, Lucinda prepared wearily to go downstairs to the dining room for a late supper. Her mind told her she had had a lucky escape from such as the marquess. Her heart ached with longing. It was going to be hard to get over a man who did not even love her. She could not understand her own distress. Rockingham was a brute and a rake.

She entered the dining room. The only other occupants were a clergyman and his wife and two small children. Lucinda nodded politely to them and sat down, feeling she should eat something, but longing only for sleep and the oblivion it would bring.

To the landlord’s disappointment, my lady turned down all his exotic dishes and said she merely wanted some bread and water and a cold collation.

She was dismally pushing the meat on her plate around with her fork when the door of the dining room crashed open. The clergyman’s wife let out a squeak of fright and Lucinda looked up.

Her husband was standing on the threshold, still attired in the black coat, buckskin breeches, and top boots he had worn during the day.